


Threshold

by Magical_Destiny



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: #ItsStillBeautiful, (except maybe in this fic ;)), Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, First Kiss, Hannibal Cre-Ate-ive, Hannibal has Feelings, Hannibal is upset, Hannibal keeps his promises...or does he?, Happy Ending, ItsStillBeautiful, M/M, Murder Wives, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Will and Hannibal have a misunderstanding, and we all know nothing good comes of that, gratuitous quoting of “If you love me you’ll stop”, my pathological quest for Happy!Hannigram continues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-07
Updated: 2016-08-09
Packaged: 2018-07-29 20:47:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7698856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magical_Destiny/pseuds/Magical_Destiny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stepping into greater intimacy has never been an easy thing for Will — or for Hannibal. In the aftermath of the fall, they stand on the thresholds of dreams and realities and negotiate the crossing of both. Post-The Wrath of the Lamb, written for Hannibal Cre-Ate-Ive's #ItsStillBeautiful</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is finished and will be updated daily. As the tags promise, there will be a happy ending. In the meantime, let me know if you’re enjoying it so far!

Sometimes, Will doesn’t feel real. The old armchair he’s slumped against feels solid enough, framed by the aged walls of the old cabin Hannibal found for them. The trees beyond the window look real and present, and so does the small visible slice of clear Canadian sky. Chilly air prickles across his face and neck despite the closed window, a sharp contrast to the warmth of the sweater he’d rescued from a thrift shop bin before they’d retreated from civilization. Will sees it all and feels it all, and, more importantly, he believes it all. There have been times in his life when seeing and feeling had no relationship to reality. 

Sleep-walking, hallucinations, fever-stained nightmares, heady psychotropic drugs — Will’s been through every variety of waking and sleeping vision. He considers himself something of an expert on dreams, so there’s an uneasy authority in his opinion when he recognizes the tumbling sense of vertigo and the hot-cold crawl of vulnerability across his skin. It’s like the fever dreams, only he doesn't have a fever, and he’s very much awake. Today, Will’s struggle isn’t with a dream or a vision. Today, it’s Hannibal’s tablet in his hands that has him drifting away from the ground when he’s only just started to rest on his own foundations. 

He takes a breath, and reads the headline again. 

_Escaped Serial Killer and Missing FBI Consultant Declared Dead_

He can’t look away from the letters screaming across the header of the news page. He should be breathing a sigh of relief, should be calling out to Hannibal in the next room to tell him that the noose around their fugitive necks has relaxed, just a little. 

Instead, Will’s world has suddenly, violently narrowed to include only himself and the first sentences of the lengthy news article. 

_“My husband was a good man,” said Molly Graham, wife of Will Graham, the FBI consultant who was declared dead today. “He would never have done the things they’re saying. That’s all I have to say.” Aside from this brief statement, Molly Graham has barred her door to reporters, letting friends and family serve as her spokesmen._

_“She’s just been told she’s a widow for the second time,” said one family friend. “We’d like to ask that the reporters respect her privacy and the privacy of her son at this difficult time.”_

_Will Graham, a former teacher at the FBI Academy in Quantico and frequent consultant for the Behavioral Science Unit of the FBI, disappeared when infamous serial killer Hannibal “the Cannibal” Lecter escaped during a prisoner transfer. The alleged botched transfer drew heat from the public as well as the federal government in what many have called the case that launched a thousand inquiries. Suspicion has since fallen on the missing profiler as a possible co-conspirator of Dr. Lecter’s rather than another addition to his long list of victims._

Will grips Hannibal’s tablet tightly. The page glows white; the light feels like fire against his face. He wonders if the words _good man_ and _widow for the second time_ are branded against his skin with the heat.

The article disappears into the edge of the screen; his thumb hovers, ready to scroll down and read more, but he can’t move. He’s full of a heavy pins-and-needles sensation like sleep paralysis. Guilt creeps cold and merciless up his neck, his mind full of white noise that might resolve itself into a scream if he concentrated on it. But Will is used to avoiding eye contact, even with his guilt, even in the solitude of his own mind. He breathes deeply and drifts away from his body with each exhale. 

Hannibal is in the room now. Will wonders distantly if he could detect the change in Will’s thoughts from across the house. He leans over Will’s shoulder to read; Will can smell the bread he’s been baking all morning. For a single, hanging moment, it’s almost comforting. 

Hannibal isn’t touching him, exactly. He hasn’t really touched him since the last of the bandages came off. Will wonders why he’s aware of that, wonders why he doesn’t shift away from Hannibal’s ambient heat and firm presence. Hannibal reaches for the tablet.

“May I?” His voice comes from directly beside Will’s ear, soft-spoken and almost gentle. His quiet tone echoes like a shout in the emptiness of Will’s chest, leaving an ache behind it. Will nods, and surrenders the tablet with nerveless fingers. Hannibal carries it to the sofa and settles in to read. 

Will watches him. He’s almost expressionless, legs crossed elegantly at the knee, one hand holding the tablet, the other curled into a loose fist. His thumb traces circles against his forefinger with enough controlled force to belie his mostly smooth face. Will recognizes the troubled set of his jaw, the tension in his lips. He sets the tablet aside and smooths his hand across the fabric of the sofa. After a moment of silence, the tablet screen goes dark. Will watches Hannibal’s face shut down just as surely as the screen had. 

“This article upsets you,” Hannibal acknowledges. “Will you tell me why?” 

The tightness in Will’s throat is verging on pain, and he knows his voice will tremble and crack if he tries to speak at anything approaching a normal volume. “You know why,” he whispers.

“Because you caused pain to people who did not deserve it.” 

“Yeah,” Will says, his voice cracking over the word. His life would be so much easier if he could wander through his mind and turn off every emotion as effortlessly as flicking light switches. He grimaces against the sudden burn in his eyes; he doesn’t particularly want to cry in front of Hannibal ever again. Or cry at all, really. Tears don’t usually respect his wishes, of course. And Hannibal’s seen him in much worse shape than this. He tries to decide whether that’s a freeing thought or a debilitating one, but Hannibal speaks before he can make up his mind. 

“They think the best of you, and take their memories on to their new lives. The same is true for you. You have your memories and your new life.” 

Will’s laugh is flat and it scrapes his throat on the way out. “Memories hurt, Hannibal.” 

Hannibal’s eyes are black in the dim light when he answers. “Beautiful things often do.” 

Will sees something in those depths, a faint flash in the dark, like moonlight against metal. He’s intimately acquainted with the cold glitter of fear, even if he’s surprised every time it appears in Hannibal’s eyes. 

“I’m not going back,” he says quietly, and wonders if he sounds reassuring or just defeated. “I can’t.” He thinks that he means it as comfort, but his words land just beyond his fingertips and out of his control. 

Hannibal nods, once. The cold glitter slips back out of sight. 

“I’m sorry you are in pain,” Hannibal says. Will hears the unspoken qualifiers threaded through his words; _I’m sorry you are in pain I neither cause nor control_ is probably the best translation. But Will thinks that he means it. It cracks something in his chest and Will feels an indefinable tremor, like the first hint of a tidal wave. 

“I—“ he says, wondering what feeling is washing over him. “I hurt _everyone_. Always.” 

The pain is in his throat again, sharper this time, and he can’t swallow it back. Whatever just cracked inside him, it must have been a load-bearing support, because, all at once, Will can feel himself falling apart. The taut muscles in his face spasm and he curls in on himself reflexively, burying his face in his hands. He’s crying, sudden and harsh as an unexpected downpour. It should be humiliating, but his vanity seems to be the only thing anesthetized against the pain eating at him like acid. He’s crying and he doesn’t care.

“Will.” Hannibal’s voice has that awful gentleness in it again. Will doesn’t want to look at him, but he can’t seem to help himself. 

Hannibal is sliding the tablet farther away, clearing the seat beside him on the sofa. It’s such a tiny gesture. An invitation so faint it could be nothing, really. Will could pretend not to understand what’s being offered, and go lock himself in his bedroom until this wave of battering emotion passes. He’ll survive this. God knows he’s survived everything else. Will has held himself up and held himself together his whole life. Hannibal looks at him, and there’s something imploring in his eyes. 

Will doesn’t want to hold himself together right now. 

He stands up and drops himself onto the sofa beside Hannibal, unsurprised when Hannibal’s arm is instantly around him, pulling him in. He tucks his face into Hannibal’s shoulder and lets the tears fall as they will. Hannibal’s hand strokes over his shoulder, through his hair. He lets himself go until he’s not bearing his own weight, or his own tears, or even his own pain. Hannibal is soaking up every bit of it. 

“Life is full of pain, Will,” Hannibal murmurs very close to his ear. “But it is also full of so much more.” 

Will feels too exhausted to argue. He’s not even sure he disagrees. Hannibal’s arms are still firm around him when the tears slow and Will leans against him, heavy and boneless. He almost doesn’t feel the feather-light kiss against his hair as he drifts off to sleep. 

===

Will’s body is awake before his mind, and he’s aware of Hannibal’s shirt beneath his cheek before he understands the significance of the sensation. He’s warm and relaxed, even though his eyes are heavy and his neck is stiff. Time has passed. Hours, maybe. Hannibal hasn’t moved an inch.

Will’s mind catches up with the rest of him when he realizes that Hannibal sat as still as a statue for hours on end so he could sleep. He rears back with enough speed to set his head spinning with vertigo. 

“Sorry,” he groans, jamming the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. “I didn’t mean to — you didn’t have to —“ Will’s eyes have decided to function again now that his head isn’t spinning; Hannibal comes into focus, his shirt wrinkled past all hope, a conspicuously damp area on his shoulder. Will experiences a sudden, frantic hope that he’d merely stained it with tears and not drooled in his sleep. Hannibal makes no comment either way as he gingerly rolls his shoulder forward, flexing the fingers of his right hand as if they’d lost sensation. They probably had. Will grimaces and leans forward to dump his head into his hands. “I’m an idiot,” he concludes. 

“A natural display of emotion is nothing to be ashamed of, Will,” Hannibal replies, unruffled, and sounding so much like he used to in their sessions that Will feels an echo of the anger that shadowed his heart in those days. He wants to say something to diffuse the breathless feeling that has suddenly replaced all the oxygen in the room; he should probably thank Hannibal for offering silent support. But the words tangle before they can reach his tongue, and the only sound he can make is a sigh. He can feel Hannibal waiting beside him. For what, he wishes he knew. 

“Are you feeling any better?” Hannibal asks eventually. Will had enjoyed the deep silence, and he wants it back. But Hannibal is standing up, now, and offering Will a hand. 

Will doesn’t take it when he stands, and he doesn’t quite know why. The _thank you_ and the _sorry I fell asleep on you, but I appreciate the nap_ both snag in his throat again, until he’s swallowing and staring at some point behind Hannibal. He feels the distance yawn up between them until he can almost see it — a deep, black chasm, dark and churning. Hannibal’s hand falls back to his side. By the time Will blinks and forces himself to make eye contact, Hannibal is turning away. But not before Will catches a flash of something dull and black in his eyes. It tugs unpleasantly at his mind and he suppresses a shiver. 

“I’ll make you some breakfast,” Hannibal says, smooth as glass. But Will hears something ragged just at the edge of his tone. The room feels like a vacuum while Hannibal walks to the door — silent, airless, lifeless. His footsteps seem unnaturally loud in the breathless quiet. When he steps through to the kitchen, Will can breathe again. But the feeling doesn’t last long. 

That dull shadow in Hannibal’s eyes stays with him, staring at him mirror-like in his mind. A sound, faint at first, but building, accompanies it. A rush of memory.

Abigail’s wet gasps as her blood pulses from her neck. The searing pain of ripped flesh in his own side, their blood to pooling hot and thick around them. Hannibal’s eyes above them both, black and fathomless. 

Will forgave him long ago for everything that happened that night, but the memory of Abigail is hardwired through a well-traveled path in his brain. Her memory fires a million synapses that conjure the spectral flash of a linoleum knife and the phantom smell of blood. He feels, again, the worst pain of all: the tearing sensation in his chest as Abigail faded from behind her crystal blue eyes. 

The images and scents and agonies fade, leaving Will cold as he listens to Hannibal moving in a kitchen not so very different from the one where Abigail died. Hannibal has never again looked at him that way, not since that night. Not until the faint echo he’d seen just now. 

Will shivers against the regret and wonders how badly he’s hurt Hannibal by being withdrawn. The man who —

Even in the privacy of his mind he flinches from the thought, and then from himself for the weakness. 

_Is Hannibal in love with me?_

He’s been avoiding the answer to that question ever since he asked it. Hell, he’s been avoiding the question for longer than that.

Bedelia’s voice slides through his mind like vapor, cold and clinging. _Could he find nourishment at the very sight of you?_ Bedelia’s eyes replace other, better loved gazes in his mind, her varnished contempt absorbing Hannibal’s opaque black and Abigail’s crystal blue. She watches him with icy contempt even through the filter of memory. _Do you ache for him?_

Will swallows painfully and acknowledges to himself that the emptiness in his chest is very definitely an ache. He lets himself wonder, at last, just how badly he’s hurt the man who loves him. 

It’s strange, he thinks. After all the blood and blades and cliff’s edges that have come between them, Will’s withdrawal wounds Hannibal the most. The power to wound — it’s a power Will had never wanted, and it appears to be the only one he has. 

===

Will lies awake that night, his door cracked and every nerve primed for _something_. He can feel Hannibal’s restlessness like the tang of static electricity in the air before a thunderstorm. He knows with absolute certainty that Hannibal is going to do something rash — and soon. 

All that remains to be seen is whose blood will be spilled. 

Will lies still in his bed, his fingers clutching hard at the comforter, his ears straining for sound. It’s like being on the sea again, tossed back and forth, only ever able to wait out storms and never to control them. But this time, the fickle waves that froth around him are made of silence and misjudged words.

Down the hall, Hannibal’s door opens. He moves silently, but Will feels his approach. 

His shadow flashes past Will’s door without pausing. A long, silent moment later, the bolt of the front door scrapes, opens, locks back into place. Hannibal is gone. 

Will is up and grasping after his shoes almost instantly. The house feels strangely empty without Hannibal’s presence, but Will is too distracted by wondering and worrying to give the sensation much thought. 

He slides out the front door and hustles to the shed where Hannibal parks his motorbike. He’ll have to borrow it if he wants to pursue the fresh tire treads that have replaced their parked car. The distant glow of Hannibal’s tail lights is rapidly fading into tiny red specks in the distance. Will plucks the leather jacket from the hook beside the door and shoves Hannibal’s helmet over his head, ignoring the scent of Hannibal’s cologne clinging to the lining. The roar of the engine almost drowns out the questions pulsing in his mind like a migraine. 

He wonders what Hannibal is doing as he peels away from their secluded cabin, the wind cutting through his jacket and chafing at every scrap of exposed skin. He keeps the red light of their car within a reasonable distance and uses the time to worry at the question of where Hannibal is going like a dog might lick at a wound. _Can I stop him?_ becomes the metronome click in his mind, louder than the engine’s groans. But the question that truly consumes him is quieter, buried neatly beneath the first. He avoids thinking about it directly, but the echoes of his subconscious are loud in the mental silence he’s trying to maintain by force. _Will_ _I?_

The flat, forested horizon of Manitoba speeds by, cold and sharp-edged in the unforgiving moonlight. The towering spires of pine and spruce trees stab, needle-like, at the sparsely clouded sky. The air has the metallic edge that means snow will be rolling in before the night is over. 

Will ignores his shiver and focuses hard on the gleam of the moon against his asphalt path and on the distant tail lights up ahead. He doesn't have a clue where Hannibal is going. They're in the middle of nowhere by meticulous design. Unless, of course, Hannibal suggested this location with ulterior motives in mind. 

Will grits his teeth in a sudden flash of anger and speeds on. 

The road is lonely and dark; there's not a single streetlight here in the mostly untamed wilderness. He catches occasional glimpses of movement in the trees on either side. If he looked, he would be sure to catch the glint of an owl's eyes, or see a moose gilded in silver moonlight. He keeps his eyes trained forward, watches the miles fly by, keeps Hannibal squarely in his crosshairs. 

The tail lights veer off to the left and disappear behind a wall of trees. Will matches the move, slows to examine the sign that appears in the glow of his lights. 

_Manitoba Meats_

His heart seems to sink and rise all at once, turning heavy and immovable even as it lodges in his throat. He knows where they are even before his eyes flick down to read the rest. 

_A Verger Company_

Will lets out a breath that steams around the edges. He understands, at last, just what Hannibal is up to so secretly in the dead of night. And he knows exactly what he has to do. 

The car lights have gone dark somewhere ahead. Will cuts his engine, swings himself off the bike, and walks it into the trees. Alone in the cocoon of black branches, he cuts the lights. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hannibal's promises aren't easily broken.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who commented, left kudos, or reblogged on Tumblr. All the heart eyes. I'll be replying to comments soon!

Margot Verger is happy. 

It’s still a strange sensation, even though she’s been basking in it for nearly four years now. In the dead of night, sometimes, she expects to hear the door banging open and Mason’s voice shattering the quiet with his usual sharp, “ _Margot!_ ” In those moments, she stares hard at Alana’s gentle profile and curls into her side until her wife feels real. Sometimes it takes a while for the world in her head to right itself again. 

But she isn’t feeling lost tonight as she looks down at Alana’s sleeping face. She stands in the warm dark of their son’s room and smiles faintly at the way Morgan has tucked himself into Alana’s arms. Alana checks on him whenever she wakes, a byproduct of Hannibal Lecter’s soft-spoken threats before his escape. The newspapers may have declared him dead, but Alana never would. Tonight she must have fallen asleep during her vigil. There isn’t room enough on the bed or Margot would simply climb in with them. As it is, she leans down to press a kiss against Alana’s cheek and then Morgan’s, smoothing back his sandy blond hair. He looks angelic in his sleep, just a hint of Alana in his cheeks and eyes.

There are other resemblances, too. Blond hair with a tendency toward wildness. Big blue eyes. Pink lips and a winning smile. Her son looks so much like Mason.

Morgan resembles Margot, too, of course. But then, she and Mason had always looked markedly alike as children.

_Are you twins?_ was the question they heard over and over again growing up. It amused Mason to no end.

_Imagine, me and you, sharing the womb. But we share so much more, don't we, Margot?_ Sometimes, when he was in a particularly cruel mood, he went even further. _Twins. I suppose we look it. But we're not identical. Not identical at all._

Privately, Margot had always agreed.

She banishes Mason from her mind as thoroughly as she banished him from the physical plane, and smiles when the memory disappears like so much smoke. He isn’t real. Not anymore. 

Alana and Morgan, however, are very real. They’ve been flitting between every obscure family property for months, even staying in the office suites of far-flung meat packing plants from time to time, as they are now. Covering their tracks and leaving no trails for Hannibal to follow. They’ve been run ragged by their breakneck pace through country after country, dodging the shadow Hannibal cast over their lives in the wake of his escape. Even so, in this darkened room with her wife and her son, Margot is very happy. 

She turns silently to the door and a sliver of light spills in as she slips away. The twin bed won’t hold all three of them and she can’t sleep without Alana beside her, so she’ll wait up. Alana will apologize for disturbing her sleep when she discovers her, and Margot will insist that there’s nothing to apologize for. Maybe one day Alana will understand that sleeplessness without fear is no hardship at all. The door clicks shut behind her. 

"Good evening, Margot." 

Goosebumps sweep up her spine, pricking like a thousand icy needles plunging through her skin and into her bloodstream. Hearing Hannibal’s voice is almost as jarring as hearing Mason’s grating tone from beyond the grave. She can’t breathe for a long, horrible moment. But adrenaline floods her system at last, and she turns to face the voice. 

Hannibal is standing with his usual impeccable posture, his hands behind his back and a half-smile on his face. There isn’t enough space between them, and this time there are no ropes or beams or bargains to hold him back. Margot is suddenly, violently aware of her flimsy silk pajamas and bare feet. There is nothing to stop him from doing what he’s come to do. 

Even if he hadn’t stated his intentions with relish long ago, she could have read it in his eyes. Hannibal smiles benignly, but his eyes are hard and black. He looks like a creature of shadow, even in the muted light of the hall.

Margot remembers Dr. Lecter seated in his chair in their therapy sessions, all relaxed grace and calm energy. Now he looks like a big cat ready to spring at the first bared jugular. If she was still able to feel fear properly, it would probably be overwhelming her right about now. 

But Margot doesn't feel a lot of things properly anymore. She’d replaced feeling with thinking a long time ago. Right now, she’s thinking that Hannibal will have to kill her and step over her dead body before she’ll let him anywhere near her son. 

Hannibal smiles like he knows it. 

"I'm not here for you or your boy," he says, leaning forward like he’s conveying a happy secret. "Congratulations, by the way. I sent you a card when he was born, but I'm not sure Alana delivered it." 

"Thank you," Margot replies. Her voice sounds like broken glass in her ears. “But I’d appreciate it if you’d see yourself out.” 

“Margot,” Hannibal chides lightly, as if she’s no more than a wayward child. “You know I can’t do that.” 

“You could, if you wanted to,” she says, quiet and sincere. Her tone is controlled, but she’s pleading and they both know it. “Your therapy was successful, Doctor. No need to fix what isn’t broken.”

He nods. “You were a model patient. But I’m afraid the time for discussion is over. The bargains have already been made.” He’s looking through her now. The shadows are deep in the hollows of his cheeks. 

“I’m happy now,” she says, just a hoarse whisper. 

Something flutters across Hannibal’s face; she thinks it might be something like compassion. But it’s gone again, no more than a rustling breeze across his inner landscape, and he’s stepping forward like she hadn’t spoken at all. She grasps backward for the doorknob.

Her hand connects with fabric instead. 

Alana’s sleeve is caught between her fingers when she turns to look. Alana herself is gray and silent as she closes the door behind her. 

“Hannibal,” she says, flat and cold. Her voice is firm, her eyes hard, but Margot learned long ago how to see through Alana’s masks. She’s so very afraid. Margot slides her hand down until their fingers can tangle together. Alana squeezes them hard. And then she pushes Margot gently behind her. 

“Good evening, Alana.” Hannibal searches her eyes, tilts his head just slightly. “If you’re wondering why the alarm system didn’t respond when you pressed your panic button, I’m afraid it’s my doing.” 

Alana nods grimly. “I know. I assume you’ll let Margot take our son and leave?” 

Hannibal is the picture of collected etiquette when he replies. “Of course.”

Margot feels something building in her muscles, a cresting wave of adrenaline that will either fuel her through a desperate attempt to fight for her wife or to sweep her son into her arms and run, and she has only a moment to decide which. Hannibal watches for her decision with interest. 

“Take your son, Margot,” he advises. “Take him and be free.” 

“Hannibal gives,” Margot rasps with bitter defiance. “And Hannibal takes away. You have no right to play God.” 

“Did you have the right to play God with your brother?” Hannibal counters. He seems delighted by the conversation, even though his single step forward has an impatient edge. “You named your son Morgan. What does it mean?” 

“A lot of things,” Margot answers, her voice catching in her throat. “Sea. Defender.” 

Hannibal nods, his eyes sharpening like he’s caught her somehow. “Did you intend that he should be your defender, or you his?” He pauses for her answer, continues when she doesn’t provide one. “In either case, you really must leave now unless you want his name to mean nothing at all.” 

Margot feels sick and cold. Alana turns around to grasp at her forearms and stare hard into her eyes. 

“Go,” she says. “For Morgan’s sake.” Tears are pooling in her eyes, but they haven’t fallen yet. Margot thinks Alana will wait until she’s gone to cry. This is it, then. The end. Something wild and frantic builds in her chest; she’s back in Mason’s room, the flickering light of the eel tank slashing at her as he toasts her with a martini. _Happiness,_ his voice grates at her across the years. _Blink and it’s gone!_

“Hannibal.” 

Another voice from the past fills the hall. Margot is as full of emotion as she can manage at the moment, so she feels nothing when Will Graham appears behind Hannibal. Alana’s eyes widen, a single tear sliding free. 

Hannibal has gone supernaturally still. Margot wonders if this is his version of a full body flinch. She’s never seen him react to another human being before. He’s always seemed as immovable as a stone monument. But now, at the sound of Will’s voice, the statue cracks; Hannibal turns his head. 

“You followed me,” he says, and there is danger in every one of the sharp lines of his silhouette, but something else, too. Something she can’t identify. 

Will’s smile is small and bleak. “That’s what you wanted me to do, wasn't it?” he says, and his voice is as soft and angry and wounded as she remembers from their talks, a lifetime ago now. But there is something in his tone she’s never heard — a warmth she doesn’t remember. He talks to Hannibal like the entire conversation is a foregone conclusion they’re all waiting for. 

Hannibal is still frozen a fews steps ahead of Alana, his head turned just enough to watch Will without losing sight of his intended victim. Hannibal is dressed more casually than Margot remembers, but he still looks as lethal and elegant as a silver butchering knife, immaculately pressed and combed from head to toe. Behind him, Will looks haggard and worn, with shadows under his eyes and his lips pressed into a tight line. His hair is mussed in conflicting directions, bedhead or hat hair or both, and his shoulders are slumped beneath a leather jacket that’s slightly too big for him. It looks like it would fit Hannibal perfectly. 

All at once, she recognizes the atmosphere hanging between the two men, a mesh of connection pulled almost unbearably taut, webbing them together and tugging one wherever the other chose to go. She recognizes the familiarity, the closeness, because it’s something like what exists between herself and Alana. She feels that connection flutter when Alana squeezes her hand. 

But maybe a web isn’t the right description. She suspects that severing the link between the two men would be more akin to slicing through an artery; everyone around would be drenched in blood.

Hannibal’s shoulders shift as he lets out a silent breath. “Are you here to observe or participate?” He asks Will, quiet but absolutely implacable. “Or to stop me, perhaps?” A beat, and he speaks again, softer still. “A fool's errand, Will.”

Will shakes his head. “I'm here to ask you a question.”

Hannibal’s profile is draped in shadow, so she isn’t entirely sure whether she imagines the minute twitch of his cheek, like he’s fighting a smile — or a grimace. Whatever she may have seen, his voice is smooth as marble when he answers. 

“Very well. Ask.” 

Will’s voice is calm. “Why are you doing this?”

Hannibal doesn’t move, but something in the air around him becomes impatient, disappointed, dismissive. “I made Alana a promise—“ he starts, but Will is already shaking his head. 

“No,” he says, quiet and hard. Hannibal subsides instantly, waiting. “You're doing this because you're angry,” Will corrects. “I upset you and now you're here. You’d think a psychiatrist would have better coping strategies.” His tone is strained and weary. 

She looks between Will and Hannibal, both of them tense and resentful and longing. It's a little like a very avant-garde couples therapy session, she thinks. A manic laugh bubbles behind her mask of control; she holds it back until it drains away. 

The air is heavy. Hannibal is waiting, fluid and frozen like a sculpture that is the very best imitation of life. 

Will sighs. “I’m also here to apologize,” he says at last. He sounds burdened, like a man shouldering a heavy load. Or at last laying one down. 

Hannibal has come to life, turning slowly to face Will. Alana slides a single step back, and Margot presses close. Behind her, the doorknob is within reach. But she won’t turn it; Hannibal would be on the two of them before they could get through the doorway. And then the time for apologies or negotiations or whatever the hell was happening right now would be over. Margot distracts herself from the brief crest of fear by wondering whether Will Graham will always materialize in her life, throwing wrenches or bringing salvation at key moments. He’s been strangely pivotal, and not always in a good way.

Hannibal’s shoulders lose a little of their sharp edge. “You don't owe me any apologies, Will.” He sounds sincere. But then, she remembers, he always did. When he’d advised her to kill her brother. When he’d offered to take the blame for Mason’s murder.

When he’d stepped into her house, stone-faced, drenched with blood, and holding a cattle prod. 

Margot finds naked honesty to be terrifying. Truth can be weaponized just as easily as lies, and it usually carries a more destructive fallout. She’s given no reason to rethink that attitude when Hannibal abruptly turns back to face them. His eyes find hers, even though he calls his words to Will. 

“You should leave if you aren't here to act.”

Will swallows hard and steps forward until he’s nearly an arm’s length from Hannibal — just out of reach. The shadows that no longer shroud Hannibal are dancing on his face now. 

“I don't owe you any apologies,” Will says, caustic but sincere. “But I'm going to give you one anyway because I'm sorry.” His hands are clenched. He loosens one fist and reaches up as though to adjust a pair of glasses that aren’t there; he changes directions and gestures between himself and Hannibal instead. “I... _this_...it's difficult for me. Change is difficult.” He wavers, but finds his footing again, speaking firmly by the end. “I need your patience.”

Hannibal nods slowly. When he speaks, Margot is shocked by the blatant affection in his tone. “You have it.” He takes a breath, lets it out slowly. “Will, you should leave if this isn't where you want to be.”

Will looks angry. At himself or at Hannibal, Margot can’t tell. “This _is_ where I want to be.” The _you idiot_ is left unspoken, but rings clearly nonetheless. Will’s eyes dart to Alana’s, then to Margot’s, as though he’s concerned about how they might interpret what he’s said. “Not here,” he clarifies instantly, still holding Margot’s gaze. He looks back to Hannibal. “Not hurting Alana and Margot. I want to be—“ The unspoken portion of their conversation isn’t over, evidently. Hannibal freezes like he’s hearing the same words that Margot is, echoing supersonic around them.

— _with you_. 

“Hannibal,” Will breathes. “Stop.” 

For just a moment, Margot witnesses a nightmare. The unyielding stone of Hannibal’s silhouette shifts before her eyes, though he barely moves. For that moment, he isn’t a sculpture, terrifying but immovable. He is a rippling mass of darkness and muscle, poised to rend and break and consume. His lips twist in a way that’s barely perceptible, but she feels the temperature drop as the facade falls away and she looks death in the face. 

He’s come here to take everything. And the only thing holding him back is the smaller man just behind him and whatever immaterial connection is hanging between them like a pulsing artery.

Hannibal takes a single step forward. Alana’s fingers are shaking between Margot’s. 

“If you love me, you'll stop,” Will says. He looks dizzy, like he’s as surprised by the words as everyone else. Margot can feel Alana’s shock almost as clearly as she can see Hannibal’s. His face has gone slack with it. He blinks once, twice. His voice is rough when he speaks. 

“This sort of manipulation is beneath you.”

Will’s scoff is almost gentle. “No it isn't. And I'm telling you the truth. If you do this…” He trails off, and Margot can almost see him approaching his ultimatum, like a cliff’s edge in the dark. Hannibal is listening with his whole body. “I won't forgive you.” 

Hannibal’s lips tighten. “You’ve made truth a blade, then. Just as you once did with forgiveness.”

Will’s smile is spectral when he whispers, “You taught me how. Please, Hannibal. Please don’t.” 

Margot has never seen Hannibal so conflicted. He stands perfectly still, but she can feel him straining forward toward Alana and backward toward Will.

"You think I don’t acknowledge, want, or believe what you feel,” Will says, as though he’s sifting through Hannibal’s mind and discovering it for the first time. “Give me something to believe."

"And that will be enough?” Hannibal asks. He exhales, and there’s something broken about the sound. “I have given you everything.”

"Give me more,” Will presses. “Give me this.”

Hannibal turns to meet his eyes. Will and Hannibal don’t speak for a long moment, but the look in Will’s eyes…

Margot thinks she might have looked the same on the operating table. Torn open and unable to escape. Changes occurring too deep to ever be reversed. 

Hannibal nods, a barely perceptible motion. “For you,” he agrees and turns away from Margot and Alana without a backward glance. He walks briskly down the hall and disappears through the door that feeds into the foyer and the night beyond. 

He’s gone. 

Margot’s exhalation is sudden and violent and it mingles with Alana’s half-sob. She clutches her wife hard. Will, she realizes, is shaking. He leans against the wall like it’s the only thing holding him upright. 

“I thought you were dead,” Alana says. “I hoped you were.” 

Will doesn’t look at her. “So did I. For a while.” 

Margot knows a little of the complicated history between Will and Alana, the shaky almosts and could-have-beens, so she hears the thousand unasked questions beneath Alana’s, “Thank you, Will.” 

He nods. The motion looks like it’s taken the last scraps of strength out of him. 

“Momma?” Morgan’s voice is small and sleepy in the doorway. Margot turns to snatch him up and hold him in a death grip. Alana crowds close to stroke his hair and kiss his cheek.

“Everything’s okay,” Margot murmurs against the crown of his head. “We’re okay.” He wriggles against the tightness of her hold, and she forces herself to relax. Will is staring at him, so tiny and fragile in her arms. 

For just a moment, she remembers another baby, cold and still in her hands. Will’s baby. 

It’s a pain she usually bears silently in her memory. But when Will raises his eyes to hers over her son’s blond head, she realizes much too late that she’s never been alone in this particular suffering. Will had lost the baby, too. Her pain is mirrored in his eyes for a fleeting moment before it recedes like an internal tide. He pushes himself off the wall like he’s forcing his feet to hold him. 

“I have to go,” he murmurs, sounding like someone weak with blood loss. “Don’t tell anyone we were here.” He disappears after Hannibal without waiting for them to agree. 

Alana is weeping silently, combing her fingers through Morgan’s hair. Margot passes him to her and she clutches tight. “Momma,” Morgan asks sleepily. “Who were you talking to?”

Margot stares at the patches of light and shadow in the empty hall. “Nobody, sweetheart. It was just a bad dream.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a quick explanatory note: the origin of the baby in the pig in "Digestivo" was a little unclear in the episode itself, but I believe that it was confirmed on Twitter that the baby was supposed to have been Margot and Will’s child, which had only just been conceived when Mason decided that forced hysterectomies were good, funny times. Aren’t we all glad that Mason is very dead? 
> 
> Speaking of trauma, it upset me deeply to write the beginning of this chapter. Hannibal was terrorizing Margot and Alana...and it was awful... Sometimes I remember that Hannibal is a, you know, KILLER, and my mind is blown. Why are you such a murdery jerk, Hannibal? And why do I love you anyway??? (You know, those words are probably a constant part of Will's internal monologue, bahaha.)
> 
> I borrowed the “If you love me, you’ll stop” line from the movie _Hannibal_ , and I’ll elaborate on that choice further in my final author’s note in the last chapter. The final chapter will return us to Will's POV after this jaunt through Margot's head. 
> 
> In the meantime, let me know if you enjoyed!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will and Hannibal have faced thresholds of pain and pleasure many times. Now they face the most difficult threshold of all: the threshold of happiness.

The door creaks loudly when Will steps back into the cabin he’s been sharing with Hannibal for weeks. He shakes the water off his borrowed leather jacket as he slides out of it. There had been no snow after all — just ice cold rain. 

The living room at the center of the house is empty. For just a moment, the sparsely decorated, wood-paneled room swims before his eyes, seamlessly blurring into the center of Hannibal’s old house in Baltimore — his dining room. Cobalt walls painted in flickering firelight, polished wood and gleaming dishes and the perfume of the herbs sprouting on the shelves climbing the wall. Snow falling just beyond the glass doors. Warmth within, bone-deep cold and darkness without. 

He blinks and there is nothing but an armchair and an old sofa and the rain murmuring beyond the windows. 

This room may be empty, but the house is not. Even if he hadn’t seen the car parked beside the porch, he would have felt Hannibal’s presence here. He gravitates to the kitchen.

Hannibal is waiting for him. Standing straight and still, he’s perfectly collected on the surface. But Will knows the aura of a creature in distress better than most.

“We need to leave,” Will says, matter of fact, and makes a point of meeting Hannibal’s eyes. “They’ve called the authorities by now.” 

Hannibal is silent and unmoving as he studies Will with flat eyes. His jaw hardens and his head tilts. “How shall we leave, Will?” he asks quietly. Will hears the rest of the question suspended between them. _Together?_

Will is tempted to throw up his hands and let Hannibal figure it out when Will tosses both their bags into the car, but the urge drains away like the droplets leaving thick trails against the kitchen window. 

“Like we should have the first time,” he says. It’s a strange feeling, speaking without deception. He’s lied to Hannibal so many times, and still felt too exposed. Now, offering the truth with no obscuring veils, he feels utterly naked and defenseless. Hannibal purses his lips, but gives no other indication of his thoughts. Standing in this kitchen, with Hannibal’s hard gaze and the black rain tapping against window, it's eerily like _that_ night four years ago. Will feels it like an unprovoked shiver scraping across his skin. He knows Hannibal feels it too when his eyes trace the place where Abigail would have stood. Will can almost see her, a specter of dust and shadow beside and between them. The duplication of that night is so perfect that when he glances at Hannibal's hands, he's surprised to find them loose and empty at his sides. No flash of a knife. 

Hannibal, he realizes, is defenseless too.

The kitchen suddenly feels almost sacred with memories. When Will speaks, he whispers. “Let’s go, Hannibal.” 

“Was it enough?” Hannibal asks, his voice softer than the rain. To anyone else, it would be a curious non sequitur. To Will, it is merely a loose strand of the ongoing conversation from the shadowed hall. Will thinks about the infinite threads of discussion that have stretched and tangled between the two of them, thinks about how many he has personally walked away from and left dangling and forever outstretched. Gently, he picks this one up. 

“Enough?” he echoes, turning the idea over in his mind. He thinks what Hannibal is really asking is, _Can you be happy now? Will you?_ “I don’t know if anything is ever enough.” 

Will thinks that he catches a flash of irritation in Hannibal’s eyes over his wandering into existential thoughts instead of specific answers. He’s tempted to follow up with, _Oh, do metaphors and metaphysics annoy you? Welcome to my world_ , but now’s not the time for making light. He thinks that time might be coming soon. Something in his chest feels lighter at the thought. 

Will forces himself to focus, anchoring his thoughts by studying the solid set of Hannibal’s shoulders, the tight bob of his throat when he swallows. “Is happiness a choice?” Will asks him, allowing his sincerity to fill his tone. “Or a circumstance?” 

A line appears between Hannibal’s brows, faint as a haphazard pencil mark and erased just as quickly. Will decides that he likes the sensation of running ahead of Hannibal and waiting for him to catch up. 

“Both,” Hannibal says at last. “It’s a scale that can tilt in one direction or the other. Very rarely, it balances perfectly.” 

“Then my scales are balanced.” There is a flicker of _something_ behind Hannibal’s eyes. Will is suddenly aware of how close they’re standing, how easy it would be for Hannibal to reach out — or for Will to touch him. 

He feels himself flush and fights the urge to step back and create distance. He struggles fruitlessly _not_ to remember how easy it was to be embraced by Hannibal, or how peacefully he’d slept against his shoulder. He’s so used to denying himself what he most wants. But the craving remains until he’s almost dizzy with it. So does the paralysis. 

“Always so afraid,” Hannibal breathes, studying Will’s eyes. “As though you don’t have the power of choice at every step. Choice is the only power that matters, Will. You exercise it in every step you take. And the ones you don’t. You alone decide who and how you are.” His voice drops to a whisper roughened by fatigue and emotion. “I still can’t predict you.” 

Hannibal is standing close enough that Will can feel the heat of his skin; Will feels alone, regardless. The sudden sensation of staring at him through glass, remote and unreachable is familiar. But Will is responsible for this separation, a barrier that seems to be containing Hannibal more successfully than the BSHCI’s plexiglass cell ever did. More than ever, Will wants to tear that barrier down. His mouth has gone dry, but he forces his lips into motion anyway. 

”I’m a little lost on the 'who' at the moment,” he says, voice trembling under the surface. “I've always been a little lost, there. But the how...how do I want to be. How do _you_ want to be?”

Hannibal pauses, but not to consider his answer. Will can see he’s merely deciding how to express an answer that already exists. ”Together,” Hannibal says at last, solid and sure. 

It takes several long moments of ringing white noise, but Will's tumbling vertigo contains itself into a slow nod. Hannibal’s smile is barely there, the tiny flash of a faraway universe flaring into a mighty rebirth and reorientation.

And just like that, the barrier is gone. Will isn’t alone. 

When Hannibal embraces him, it feels so much like the cliff. Only now, there is no rush of blended pain and adrenaline, no creeping sensation of despair. He feels strangely numb and far away and wonders, just for a moment, if he’s dreaming again. 

The soft fabric of Hannibal's shirt is warm under his cheek; he tries curling his fingers into the fabric and discovers that he is aware of the sensation. A deep breath sighs out of his chest and he finds that he can feel that, too. He's here and Hannibal is here and he’s very much awake. 

_Am I dreaming?_ The question has floated half-formed beside him for so many years. In the beginning he’d often looked to Hannibal to help him dispel his doubts. In the days and months and years without Hannibal, he'd avoided looking directly at his lingering uncertainties and managed to convince himself the question didn't exist at all. The question had whispered at him all along, he realizes. But not because he wasn't sure of his sanity. He thinks, maybe, that he was wondering about his entire existence. 

_Am I dreaming?_

He tightens his grip on Hannibal and decides that he isn't. 

Or if he is, he doesn't care to wake up. 

He laughs lightly, and it vibrates against Hannibal’s chest. Hannibal doesn’t release him, but the turn of his head is inquiring. 

“This doesn’t feel real,” Will explains, not unkindly. It feels good to speak with genuine affection, with no blades hidden beneath soft tones. Hannibal answers his thoughts as much as his words and it’s comforting. 

"You're not dreaming, Will. You are real; I am real.” He trails his hand lightly over Will’s hair as if to emphasize the point, and leaves his hand firm against the nape of Will’s neck when he leans back to look at him. Will feels the minute separation keenly. 

Hannibal studies him again, weighing something. "Tell me where you are,” he requests, and Will recognizes the words instantly, a retreading of familiar, if risky, ground. As always, their conjoined past is a rose bed equally full of flowers and thorns.

"My name is Will Graham. I'm in wherever-the-hell, Manitoba. And the time..." He doesn’t look at the clock on the wall. "I think it's about time…”

Hannibal looks at him, head tilted just slightly in his direction. Allowing him access, if he should wish. An invitation, soft and beckoning, as all Hannibal's invitations always are. 

Will is painfully aware of his graceless motion when he moves closer in fits and starts — a decision made in stages of uncertainty and doubt. Hannibal is absolutely still. 

The black of Hannibal's eyes isn't opaque and impenetrable from this close. It's warm and bottomless instead, shades of brown and red, full of spinning possibilities like the velvet of the night sky. Hannibal's face is open to him, now, and Will sees something like awe. It’s too close, too much; he closes his eyes, feels the faint flutter of eyelashes when Hannibal does the same. Will makes his choice and closes the distance between them.

He discovers that kissing Hannibal feels exactly like crossing an unfamiliar threshold only to discover that he’s home after all. The fear is gone, evaporated like so much mist in the sunlight. In its place, a new sensation grows, bright and vivid and _alive_ as his fever dreams, once upon a time. _A dream come true_ is the phrase that drifts up out of his mind, and he would laugh at the absurdity if his lips weren’t otherwise occupied. As it is, he smiles. In the impossible convergence of choice and circumstance, Will Graham discovers the threshold of happiness, where, apparently, it had been waiting all along, and finally steps across.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I borrowed the "If you love me, you'll stop" line from the movie adaptation of _Hannibal_ , from a scene that is wildly different from the novel. The whole end of the movie is a compete departure from the book...for obvious reasons, when you read it. And although I'm iffy on the book because Clarice’s ending is so troubling (even though the novel is gothic and delicious in every way) and I’m iffier on the movie (although it's been years and I ought to give it another chance), I really, REALLY wanted to use that line. In fact, it was the idea of Will playing the "if you love me, you'll stop" card that inspired the rest of this fic. Six words turned into 8000. What is my life. (A question I've asked myself on a daily basis since becoming a Fannibal. It's just a scream in the background of my mind at this point. I guess there are rooms in my mind palace where I can't safely go. *avoids the Mads-Mikkelsen-photoshoots room in order to remain a functional adult*)
> 
> Anyway. The "if you'll love me, you'll stop" line comes, to the best of my admittedly subpar and porous memory, ONLY from the movie _Hannibal_ and NOT from the novel. I did a cursory check of the novel to make sure I wasn't wrong about that, but please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong! 
> 
> Also, I'm justifying my use of the movie line by pointing at the season one finale, in which Vide Cor Meum, a piece from the _Hannibal_ movie soundtrack, is used in the final scene. If the show can borrow, then so can I, darn it. If the line is from the novel and my memory is just awful...well, then I'm drawing from Thomas Harris, and my legitimacy only intensifies, mwahahaha. ;) 
> 
> Speaking of legitimacy and the possible lack thereof, how about my cheesy ending??? I gave myself some funny looks while writing this, LOL. I'm afraid I may have gone a little sentimental and sappy, but listen — I like happy endings. And there's really no point in pretending my quest for Happy!Hannigram is anything but pathological at this point, so I surrender to the siren call of angst-with-a-happy-ending. 
> 
> So, in conclusion, the Murder Husbands did NOT eat the Murder Wives, and they all lived happily ever after. 
> 
> Let me know if you enjoyed the angst, the sappiness, and the good, funny times. And thanks for reading. Happy almost anniversary of "The Wrath of the Lamb"!

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so excited for Hannibal Cre-Ate-Ive's #ItsStillBeautiful celebration. I've been working on this fic off and on for weeks and I'm so glad to finally be posting! And to get the chance to read all the other wonderful entries. As for this fic, look for updates tomorrow and Tuesday. And comment? :D


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